Best comment in awhile. Thanks for your thoughts. I had the same concerns, posting the above, but in my enthusiasm figured I'd put 'em aside and just revel in the idea of it.

In reality, yah, maintenance (which is actually easy, cheap) and particularly vandalism and theft are real problems. That said, I don't hear about problems with rental car companies—so we need to start holding renters accountable to the law, just as we do with other rented items. Have a big deposit fee that you only pay if the bike doesn't come back, stuff like that. It's fixable.

Velib and others are just doing later adopters a favor by showing us the challenges to be overcome.

A company called intrago ( http://www.intragomobility.com/ ) is working on a system attached to an individual, so someone is resposible for the bike. I'm not sure how close to operation they are, but hei the site and tell them to hurry it up already